Carmen Morales Durán
Laboratorio de Astrofísica Espacial y Física Fundamental
Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial
I studied Physics at Madrid University Complutense and did my PHD
under the direction of Professor Willhem Becker from the Basel
Observatory in Switzerland on the subject: Galactic structure by
means of RGU and UBV photographic photometry. I have worked for
five years at the Astronomy Department of the Madrid Complutense
University as assistant professor of Astronomy and Instrumental
Optics.
In 1976 I moved to INTA into the National Commission for Space
Research. There I started to work with ultraviolet data from the
TD1 and IUE satellites. My research topics were then, and still
are now, interstellar medium, interstellar reddening and blue
straggler stars.
In the late eighties I started a collaboration, with Willem
Wamsteker and colleagues from Italy and the United States with the
purpose of developing a satellite, called Santa María, to be
launched in 1992 in the fifth centenary of the discovery of America.
We didn't succeed, but in Spain this was the starting point for the
development of a satellite, smaller and less sophisticated than
Santa María but which was finally launched in 1997.
The Spanish MINISAT was collecting and sending scientific data for 5
years. The Science Operations Centre, data processing, calibration
and reduction was done at LAEFF for the ultraviolet instrument
onboard MINISAT (EURD), for which I was the Principal Investigator.
EURD consisted of two spectrographs observing simultaneously in
the Far and Extreme ultraviolet (350-1100 A). The purpose of the
instrument was to detect the emission from the hot interstellar
medium. We observed only during eclipses in order to avoid the
solar emission at these wavelengths. BUT due to the MINISAT orbit
altitude of 587 km, our data were strongly contaminated by
geocoronal lines of Hydrogen and Helium from the upper atmosphere.
In the zones free of geocoronal lines we didn't get any line from
the hot IM, only upper limits.
At present I continue to study the interstellar reddening, mainly
the 2200 A bump and the relation of total to selective extinction
Rv which strongly influences interstellar reddening in the
ultraviolet.